


Out of the Dark

by tinx_r



Category: Riptide (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-19
Updated: 2008-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-17 15:52:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/553261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinx_r/pseuds/tinx_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick's made a lot of mistakes in his life...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out of the Dark

**Title:** Out of the Dark  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Summary:** Nick's made a lot of mistakes in his life...

**1972**

The first time I kissed him I knew it was a mistake. But those scared blue eyes hooked right into my soul, felt like, and my lips were on his even while my brain was making excuses. Once I'd tasted him there was no going back - his mouth was sweet and hungry and fucking close to paradise after the filth and fear of war.

I don't mean it was wrong. The rules were different over there - the right and wrong you knew at home meant less than nothing when you were shaking in your cot, trying to get your head around the death you'd seen that day. Every day. Twined together, sweaty and sated, the fear and horror in temporary retreat, I knew we were closer to salvation than sin.

What I didn't know was what I'd do when it was over, one way or another. If I made it, I'd be headed back home to a life without him in it. Over there I was his touchstone and he was mine, but once we got back to US soil, if he thought of me at all I knew he'd put it down to war and call it a mistake.

**1974**

I never expected to hear from him again, so when I heard his voice on the phone I wondered if I was crazy. When I saw the dive he wanted to meet me at, I wondered if he was. I hoped it wasn't gonna be a mistake.

Then I spotted him and it knocked me for a loop. In his civvies he looked softer, somehow - so damned different from the guy I'd faced down hell with that I didn't know how I'd talk to him or what to say.

I joined him at the bar, the stranger who'd been my partner, and gave him our old signal, the one that meant "Let's blow this joint."

His clothes were different but underneath his skin was the same. The taste of him was heady and familiar on my tongue.

We didn't talk. We didn't need to. The pictures in my head were the same ones that haunted him, and talking couldn't wipe them clean, no matter what the counsellors said. He held me as hard as I held him and we moved together, silent as we'd had to be, hungry for each other and the peace that faded the dreams to black.

**1975**

I told myself the restlessness was something caused by war. I told myself I ached from being grounded after two years in the air.

I told myself I didn't need him so often I almost believed it.

A cheap motel by the highway knew I was a liar. Every time I saw its fritzing neon sign I swore it was the last.

But the way he breathed, the way he smelled, the way he touched me - that was something I couldn't give up. That saggy, creaking bed became a sanctuary when his body was hot against mine. But every time he left me in the cold bare room I knew it for the sordid mistake it was.

He was careful to show me how little he cared. I tried damned hard to do the same, and maybe I made him believe it.

I never learned to believe it myself. Every time he looked at me, his blue eyes still as scared as war had made them, I knew, mistake or not, I'd come for him every time he called. He needed what I could give, and I'd hold him forever, or at least for as long as he'd let me.

**1976**

He came to me one night stinking of a woman, and I lost it. I threw a punch and he hit me back; we fell on the bed, still struggling. What started out as frantic wrestling turned tender, for the first time since we got back from Vietnam.

I talked to him that night. I told him about the restlessness that drove me from my mother's house and how bad I needed to fly again after two years spent on the ground. I told him how in some ways I thought that taking my discharge had been a big mistake.

The things I'd seen in combat made it hard to find the meaning in the civilian jobs I tried, and he told me that it was the same for him. He whispered he was trapped in someone else's life, someone he'd forgotten how to be.

That night he didn't leave. He said my name and nothing else, just laid his body over mine and let me hold him. He slept in my arms while I watched the shadows climb and stretch across the walls. When he woke again he kissed me, long and deep, and didn't try to pull away.


End file.
